Talk:Saturation (chemistry)
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Hm, I wrote a stub on Cation exchange capacity and then base saturation got linked to the saturation page. But that link really did not make sense, since the meaning of saturation in "base saturation" was not covered. Maybe I've messed things up, but the term "saturation" is used extensively in soil science, and part of soil science is about chemistry. Nitrogen saturation, soil moisture saturation and base saturation are all examples of uses of "saturation" that go a bit beyond what is common in pure chemistry Saittam 00:10, 16 October 2005
There was a whole load of irrelevant stuff on Sucrose which really belongs here? 219.77.98.28 09:22, 12 February 2006 (UTC) When you add sugar to water, the sugar crystals dissolve and the sugar goes into solution. But you can't dissolve an infinite amount of sugar into a fixed volume of water. When as much sugar has been dissolved into a solution as possible, the solution is said to be saturated.
The saturation point is different at different temperatures. The higher the temperature, the more sugar that can be held in solution.
When you cook up a batch of candy, you cook sugar, water, and various other ingredients to extremely high temperatures. At these high temperatures, the sugar remains in solution, even though much of the water has boiled away. But when the candy is through cooking and begins to cool, there is more sugar in solution than is normally possible. The solution is said to be supersaturated with sugar.
Supersaturation is an unstable state. The sugar molecules will begin to crystallize back into a solid at the least provocation. Stirring or jostling of any kind can cause the sugar to begin crystallizing.
